The Door Is Closed on ‘Sex and the City’ — For Now [Exclusive]

And just like that... it looks like it's over. Even when a chapter ends, people keep wondering whether there is another reunion, another revival, or another check-in waiting somewhere down the line. That is especially true for Sex and the City, which has already proven more than once that saying goodbye does not always mean forever, but for Michael Patrick King, it sounds like this current ending is exactly that.

Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub at SXSW while promoting The Comeback Season 3, King made it clear that, at least from his perspective, he has reached the end of what he wanted to say with both Sex and the City and And Just Like That.

“I think when you write, you write to the end of the thought that you had. Even with all the comebacks, each time we ended, we thought, ‘We're done now.’ With Sex and the City and and Just Like That, I ended the chapter because it felt like that chapter was done. Whether there's another book or not, whether somebody else decides to do those amazing characters in 10 years is a whole other thing. Right now, it's closed for me.”

What's important to note there is that King felt the show was at a natural end point. That perspective also makes his reflections on Sex and the City’s original rise a lot more interesting, because he does not describe the show as some overnight pop-culture detonation. If anything, he seems amused by how people remember it now versus how slowly it actually built into what it became.

“What's great about The Comeback and Sex and the City is it starts very small. You just do the show that you're doing. When Sex and the City started… People say, ‘Oh, I love Sex and the City,’ and I go, ‘You love Sex and the City Season 4.’ It took a long time for stuff to really gel and go. But right around Season 3, we knew that it was huge. Then when it started, there started to be beach parties in Brazil for every premiere. It was really, really fun and it's only carried along because of people. There's no machine that does that. That's people attaching to the characters and people.”

'Sex and the City' Will Never Die

King also pointed to why the show mattered in the first place, and why it hit with so many people when it did. For him, it was not just about fashion, romance, or New York fantasy. It was about correcting something deeper in the culture.

“There was also a need for Sex and the City," he said. "There was a voice that needed to be amplified, which is single women are not the leper. You know what I mean? There was a need for it to be in the world at that time, because people were still thinking of 34-year-old ladies who were single as sad, and we had to show them they're not that.”

That quote gets at the core of why the show lasted. However glossy or heightened it could be, Sex and the City was still speaking to something real, and King clearly knows that is what gave it staying power far beyond its immediate cultural moment, and apparently, that staying power is still evolving, most recently through younger generations rediscovering it as some kind of period piece.

“I heard that there's a huge resurgence on Netflix of Sex and the City and that people in their 20s are captivated by the fact that no one's on their phones. They feel it's like seeing a Merchant Ivory movie, like, ‘What's happening? They're looking at each other and talking and having a throughline.’ I mean, I think people are nostalgic for a time they never even had.”

Sex and the City and And Just Like That are streaming now on HBO Max.